A few weeks after Ohio State’s Cotton Bowl win and a day after Dre’Mont Jones surprised the world by opting to return to college, there was a collection of returning team leaders made available to the media inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center to talk about the future.

Jones found himself answering questions about why his future didn’t include getting paid. Like Nick Bosa, who was sitting next to him on the aluminum bleachers next to the locker room, Jones should have been preparing for the NFL draft somewhere.

Jones spoke about how that freak injury caused by scraping his leg on a nail in the locker room stopped him from achieving his personal goals, how the three games he missed as a result might have hurt his draft stock, how he wanted to be the best defensive tackle in college football.

Then Urban Meyer said this four months later after Ohio State’s spring game: “The guy that probably had the best spring of anybody is...